No I in Hero
by SE46 Mantis
Summary: True fear, she supposed, had been watching a hurt and angry boy turn his brother's dream into a monster. Brief drabble on Honey Lemon's thoughts during select scenes of Big Hero 6. Beware spoilers.


She sees the card, the green nursing card glinting gently on the floor, and she rushes to it in a surge of hope. She picks it up, glances to ascertain that, yes, this is the card that Tadashi had always so passionately described as the heart of Baymax, and then rushes forward to stop the chaos.

Tadashi had always passionately described many things about Baymax. His non-threatening and huggable appearance, his intuitive learning systems that adapted to the outside world, his myriad of tools to help and heal the sick and injured, his unfailing kindness and sweetness.

He had never passionately described him as a _killer._

Running to catch up to him, she can only watch as the robot, titanic and unrelenting within gleaming armour, bats aside Gogo with ease, her wheels falling off of her as she hits the ground hard. He throws aside Wasabi as if he is nothing, picks up Fred by the scruff of his suit and offhandedly tosses him into a wall like a rag doll as she gets closer and closer to him. Throughout his dismissal of the others, his gaze, unblinking and bright red, never loses sight of Callaghan. The masked man is trying to make his escape; she can see him retreating to the roof upon the microbots, and Baymax must have him locked on because his arm is raising and she already see mechanisms preparing to activate, the rocket punch ready to fire.

There's no way he'll miss. There's no way Callaghan will survive. She saw what Baymax could do to a statue, to a wall; a human being wouldn't stand a chance. If she didn't act now, Callaghan was going to _die._

As quickly as she can, the robot ignorant of her in his single-minded quest to murder the retreating villain, she rushes to the front of him, eyes locking onto his access port and her hand smacks it, causing the system to extend; a red card is in there, and empty slots where the green card, the original core of the robot, must go.

A thousand fears grip as her as her hand aligns the green card with the exposed port, with one of the empty slots: What if it's the wrong way around and fails to activate before Baymax can _kill _Callaghan, what if Baymax notes her invasion and _kills her_, what if she misses, what if she should remove the red one first, what if she's just too _slow_-

No, none of that, none of that, act now, act now_, stop him, __**STOP HIM NOW.**_

One hand slides the card into its slot and both hands slam it down as hard as she can, both card and port sinking back into smooth armour. She can almost hear the rocket punch preparing to fire, preparing to kill, she can't even breathe in her panic and then-

Baymax pauses; his rocket fist doesn't activate. His posture is static for a moment, then there was a whine of mechanics, and his arm slowly begins to droop. She maintains her hold on his port for a moment, breath almost disbelieving that it actually seems to have worked, gazing up at him in fearful anticipation of what will happen next.

His head tilts down to peer at her, and she lets out the breath she was holding in relief when she sees his eyes are the empty black she knows instead of the bright red that had beaten her friends down. Warily, she nevertheless steps back as he glances around, blinking in confusion. Gogo and Wasabi move into her peripheral vision, both of them gazing at Baymax with the same caution and unease she was feeling. There is no instantly forgetting what he had just done, after all; none of them had anticipated this, had been prepared for this at all, for what he had been turned into.

Seeing Fred struggling back to his feet, seeing the way they all looked at him with nervousness, fear, doubt, he states: "My healthcare protocol has been violated."

Yes, yes it has, hasn't it? In that terrifying moment, watching him throw aside her friends, _his friends, _watching him hunt Callaghan relentlessly, she had seen what he'd almost done. Had she not acted, she would have seen him kill a human, the one thing that Tadashi had gone to such lengths to prevent him from ever doing. He was a nurse, a huggable companion, a source of comfort, not some single-minded murderer.

What he had been willing to do- No… no, that was wrong. He hadn't been willing to do that. He had protested it until the programming took him over. He had been made to do it. And that very fact, the simple idea that someone could go so far as to turn sweet Baymax into something so terrible, has her whole body gripped with terror.

Baymax toddles over to Fred, his movements the awkward little teetering she'd always known him to have instead of the focussed stalking of the hunter she'd witnessed, and assists him to his feet, only to rear back in confusion when Fred promptly pulls himself out of his grip. She can't blame either of them; Fred had been beaten away by him without a care and Baymax, with his primary card having been absent, must have no idea of what he had done.

"I regret any distress I may have caused." Baymax says, glancing between the four of them, his robotic tone barely conveying sombreness as he deduced the logic of their wariness. She feels a flare of pity for him; his programming dictated a need to help humans, and rescinding on that must hurt him as much as artificial protocol could be hurt. Tadashi had made him to help people, and here he had been hurting them.

She can't imagine how Tadashi would react if he had seen Baymax then-

Her musing is interrupted when Hiro is front of her, aggressive, disbelieving, angered, and he is shouting at her: "How could you do that?! I had him!"

For a brief moment, she is frightened, more frightened than she had been at the masked man and his swarming microbots, more frightened than she had been at seeing Baymax nearly killing someone. Because Hiro, sweet and smart and kind little Hiro, her lost friend's beloved little brother, is shouting at her with utter _rage_ in his eyes. Because Hiro, wide-eyed and awestruck little Hiro whom had been so enamoured with her chemical-metal embrittlement, had been the one to unleash that red-eyed murderous version of a healthcare companion.

And now he is shouting at her, he is angry at her, because she had prevented him from _murdering someone_. Baymax had been the one to execute the attack but he had been the one to rip out the robot's heart and leave him with nothing but mindless violence. Callaghan had been cruel, Callaghan had betrayed them, yet Hiro had… Hiro…

Against his aggression she can't formulate a defence, an excuse, a protest; she leans back, terrified of this boy, this bright and innocent boy whom she had adored from the first moment she saw him, who she had just seen turn his own brother's dream into a monster, but then Wasabi is front of her, waving the boy away as he hisses: "What you just did, we _never _signed up for."

They'd never signed up for vengeance. They'd never signed up for murder. They'd never signed up to see kind and caring Baymax turned into a war machine. Her throat tightens with everything Wasabi's words insinuate as Hiro turns from them, unwilling to hear him out or justify himself.

She wants to reach out and hug him, to soothe the violence within him. She wants to run away from this madness, to never look back at what she has seen here. As it is, all she can do is stand and watch.

"We said we'd catch the guy." Gogo growls, leaning in intimidatingly as Hiro continues to pace before them, his back turned to her in his refusal to listen. "_That's it."_

"I never should have let you help me!" Hiro shouts, twisting around to confront her, anger flooding his tone. The others glance at each other, struck by the accusation, shuddered by how far the situation has gotten out of hand, before he turns to Baymax and snaps: "Baymax, find Callaghan."

The robot looks up somewhat, his visor blearily flashing green, before glancing back down at him and stating: "My enhanced scanner has been damaged."

Hiro snarls in frustration before striding around and climbing onto Baymax's back, adhering onto it with his magnetics before demanding: "Wings!"

Said wings extend, and Honey find herself becoming increasingly panicked by what he's going to do if he leaves. There is no worry for herself or others, of being abandoned here, in this moment, but there is fear of what Hiro will do if they allow him to leave, if they're not there with him if he goes to hunt Callaghan-

"Hiro, this isn't part of the plan!" Fred protests, attempting to talk him down. This isn't part of the plan at all; the plan was to get the mask, to catch the villain and to turn him in. None of them anticipated this, this sudden change in their friend, the bright young boy so eager to learn of their studies and their school, this sudden desire to hurt someone, to _kill someone._

"Fly!" Hiro shouts, ignorant of their pleading, and Baymax's thrusters activate, pushing them upwards, taking both of them away from her.

"**Hiro!" **She desperately shouts, all of them shout, lunging forward with arms outstretched as Baymax begins to ascend; it doesn't matter that the robot is taller than her, that the boy is on his other side, that he's about to fly off. She has to get to Hiro, to grab him, hug him, shake him, anything, anything to stop him before he does something that he'll regret forever.

But where she'd been fast enough to stop Baymax, she wasn't fast enough to stop Hiro.

They're repelled by the raw power of the robot's thrusters, unable to reach the boy before he and his brother's creation are gone into the sky, through the escape route utilised by Callaghan, and they're out of sight in the moment it takes for the group to recuperate.

Hiro was gone.

* * *

Gogo has skated off to search for any surviving computers or hardware for any more information, deathly silent and eyes cold as she wheeled off, leaving the others to discuss what to do next. Getting off the island and finding Hiro was their first priority, but without Baymax to fly them out, that concept may prove to be a challenge. Honey considered making a raft from her chem-balls and floating them back to the mainland, but Fred revealed he'd already prepared a solution.

"I've called Heathcliff; he'll be bringing the family chopper around to pick us up." Fred says, characteristic enthusiasm replaced by an unnerving dejection, fixing the eye-piece of his suit onto the back of it as he tells them this. "After we get off this creepy place, we can go find Hiro and Baymax."

"They can't go too far, and they can't go after Callaghan either." Wasabi muttered, hand on his chin and thinking intently, deducing what their missing friend's moves might be. "His scanner was damaged, and maybe other systems too; they'll need to stop somewhere to fix it before they can chase after him, which would probably back at the mansion with the rest of the tech."

"Yeah, fixing Baymax up will take him a bit of time. We'll be able catch up to them before they can… you know, go all hunt-for-revenge after Callaghan."

"That would be preferable."

Wasabi's tone is warning now, clearly attempting to keep the school mascot turned superhero from going too deeply into uncomfortable subjects, because he can see that Honey is on edge right now. She's standing to the side of them, staring up at the hole where their missing friends had left through, hands attempting to squeeze the unrelenting shell of her purse in some attempt to ease her worries.

"It's pretty twisted though, that whole shifting Baymax's personality bit." Fred carries on, painfully unaware of his fellow hero's warning, Honey Lemon stiffening at his words. "Like going-down-a-dark-violent-path anti-hero kinda twisted, like this one comic I had, what was it, the Grim Avenger, who totally went nuts and started-"

"_Not helping, Fred_." Wasabi snaps furiously, knocking his elbow into the other male and levelling a potent glare at him for his lack of tact, both of them then watching as Honey starts to hyperventilate at the very concept of Hiro achieving his vengeance whilst they were unable to stop him, of killing someone, maybe of killing someone else. Her lungs tighten and her breaths wind up becoming far too quick and uneven for her liking, but she can't quite help it when all she can think of right now is _Hiro and Baymax standing over Callaghan's __**corpse**__-_

Realising his blunder, Fred hides under the hood of his suit and mumbles an apology, before leaping off to help Gogo find anything of interest. Or to avoid Wasabi's wrath, either way.

He watched the wannabe-Kaiju jump away before returning his attention to Honey, who is attempting to return her breathing pattern to normal. Concerned, sympathetic, he strides over and grips her by the shoulder, steadying her as he declares: "Honey, don't worry about that; Fred's just being a moron. Hiro's not going to do that, and neither is Baymax. We won't let them. We _won't_ let them."

"He shouted at me." She murmurs softly as she calms down enough to respond, clutching her purse tightly as if it is the only thing that's keeping her from losing it, from bursting into tears, collapsing to the floor- and chances are it probably is right now. "He shouted at me because I… because I didn't let him kill Callaghan. Because I stopped Baymax from killing him. I stopped Tadashi's dream from killing someone and he, he s-shouted at me."

Her eyes are blurring slightly, liquid welling up in them as the brunt of the situation truly hits her. Baymax had been the pinnacle of all of Tadashi's hopes and wishes, his desire to create a better world, and that dream had almost been twisted into a nightmare. Hiro, in his grief, in his pain, had almost become the same kind of monster that Callaghan had become, someone who didn't care who got hurt so long as they got what they wanted.

_Baymax, destroy_, he had said. Destroy, as if Callaghan was just a machine to be dismantled, as if he weren't even human. For all he had done, he was still human, and yet…

"It's messed up." Wasabi sighs, uneasily scratching his head, running fingers through his dreadlocks as Honey attempts to keep it together. "I never guessed it could have been Callaghan under the mask, but I never guessed that he'd flip out like that either. Man, if you hadn't got the card back into Baymax when you did…"

"It… it scares me." She admits, hugging her purse to her chest and retracting her visor to dab at her eyes before any tears could fall. "Knowing Hiro could have… he nearly…"

"I know. But I also know that he was hurt, Honey." Her friend offers gently, doing his best to understand and diffuse the situation as he places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You know how he was when Tadashi died. And Callaghan… well, you heard what he said. That can't have been good for Hiro to hear; it must have hit him deep. I know what he did was wrong, beyond wrong, but I can kind of understand why he did it. He's not a bad person, Honey; he's just a kid who's been hurt and doesn't know how to handle it."

When she doesn't answer, simply hugging her purse tighter still, he turns her to face him, his expression sombre and meaningful, and he tells her: "But what Fred said, that's not how it's going to go down. We'll find Hiro, okay? We'll talk to him, we'll help him. We won't let him become a murderer, Honey. You won't, I won't, none of us won't. And I don't think Baymax would want that to happen again either; you saw how he reacted to his protocol getting overridden. He won't want Hiro to do that to him again."

Honey nods slowly in acceptance of Wasabi's logic, before suddenly turning to him and wrapping him in a tight hug, both thankful for his support and quite needy for something to hold onto and squeeze until she can feel better, tears continuing to prickle at her. He returns the hug, patting her a bit awkwardly on the back with how tightly she's squeezing him, and assures her that they'll be there to help Hiro. They'll help him just like Tadashi would. They won't let him or Baymax become a monster.

She'd be damned before she'd let that happen.

The sound of an oncoming helicopter snags her attention, and she can hear Fred hollering that Heathcliff had arrived, and then she hears Gogo declaring that she's found something. The former statement has her relieved, the latter has her curious, but for now, all there is to do is get out of here and find Hiro.

She has to find him, before he goes too far.

Gogo wheels over to them, Fred on her heels as she shows them a hard-drive, declaring that it had important information on it. A moment to gaze in curiosity at the little red device, before Wasabi tells them to move out, determining that they were done here and that they had teammates to find.

Heathcliff is waiting outside by the chopper as the group exits the facility and approach him, Gogo examining the hard-drive in her hand with something akin to purpose, and he asks: "How went the heroics, sir?"

"Heathcliff, my man, it's a crazy story." Fred sighs dramatically, raising a suit-clad hand and fist-bumping the butler. "But right now, we just need to find out wherever Hiro and Baymax flew off to."

"I'm certain your suit's communication mechanisms can be uploaded into the helicopter to copy the signal and track them, sir."

"Our chopper can do that? I mean, of course it can! Awesome!" He declared, giving the eyepiece of his suit to his butler as they filed into the vehicle, Heathcliff into the driver's seat and the four heroes in the back, girls on one side and the boys on the other. "Assembled into the Fredcopter, it's time for Fred's Angels to fly to the rescue!"

"Just stop." Wasabi grunted, and Fred is at least aware enough to apologise again before falling silent.

Honey just sighs deeply, leaning back into soft velvety seating as she straps her belt on, her purse sat by her side and hands flicking up to wipe at her eyes. It's tempting to just lose herself into the comfy seats and try not to think about any of this, but to do so would be detrimental. There is no use is trying to hide or run from this; she has to confront it. They'll find Hiro, and if she has to hug every last bit of pain out of him, she will. She won't let become like Callaghan, both for his sake and for his brother's sake.

She perks up from her thoughts when someone touches her leg, noting it to be Gogo next to her, the other girl having removed her helmet and locked her eyes onto the taller female. She gazes at her with her usual stoic expression, albeit marred by a need to reassure her, and she says: "It'll be okay, Honey. We'll find them. We'll sort this out."

She presses the hard drive into Honey's hand: "We'll show him this and we'll make him see. We'll sort it all out. I promise."

"I hope so." Honey breathes, sinking back into her seat and cuddling both the hard drive and her purse to her, finding whatever comfort she can in the former's promise of elaboration and the faint swish of chemicals within the latter. "I really hope so."

They have already lost Tadashi.

They can't lose Hiro too.

* * *

When everything is sad and done, as the sun sets over the wreckage of the portal, the team turn from the clean-up operation to take their leave. Heathcliff's will be coming in shortly with the chopper, and they're all hoping for a quick extraction, before any news reporters catch sight of them and attempt interrogation or anything

Honey is walking alongside Hiro now as they leave the incident behind, the other three ahead of them, and she tentatively glances down at him. The poor boy's movements are slow, dejected, utterly _tired. _She can't blame him; it's been rough for all of them, with Callgahan's revelation, their battles against the microbots, the struggle to save Krei. But Hiro…

Hiro has lost Baymax.

They've all lost Baymax, but he was Hiro's support, his best friend, the last and greatest remnant of his brother's achievements, and now he was gone. He had sacrificed himself in his eternal quest to provide care and safety for everyone around him, to save both Hiro and Abigail from the world beyond the portal.

Hadn't poor Hiro suffered enough, she wondered. To lose his own brother, to be betrayed by his idol, and now to have lost his best friend? Why did fate continue to rain pain on him wherever he went? She can't even imagine how he must be feeling right now. Even with all said and done, with Callaghan imprisoned and Krei and Abigail saved, he had still come out of that realm without his best friend. Even with the team's first victory, he had been forced to receive this grim defeat.

Lost in her sympathy, she almost doesn't notice the boy beside her slowing down slightly, and when she turns to see what the matter was, he tentatively glanced up at her and asked: "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Of course." She responded gently, moving back to stand before him and lowering herself onto her knees to be on his level, a flicker of pain going through her when she sees that his eyes have gone rather puffy in his barely restrained grief. "What do you need?"

He pauses for a moment, biting his lower lip as he thinks it through, thinks intently about what he wants to say and how he might say it. Then, solemnly, he pulls off his helmet and sets it on the ground before him, and he stands as tall as he can and takes a deep breath.

"Honey, I … I wanted to apologise to you. And everyone else as well." He declares, slowly rubbing at his eyes in a bid to pre-emptively remove any tears building up in them, determined not to cry in light of his bid to make things right. "For what I… what I did on the island. I never should have-" A shuddering breath, pained by the memory. "-should have done that to B-Baymax, to Callaghan-"

"Hiro." She murmurs softly, heart practically tearing at his words.

"-I just, I… I know there's no excuse for it, I just- No, no, no excuses, I'm sorry. You saved him, you saved Baymax from me and I had the nerve to, to get mad at you, like an idiot, like a baby-"

"Hiro."

He carries in, impassioned by his admittance and barely holding back his pain: "-And I'm sorry, because you didn't deserve it, you didn't deserve that just for being a good person, because you're-"

"Hiro."

"-You're just the nicest person I know and if T-Tadashi had-"

Where words did not go through, the display of her pulling off her helmet and tossing it aside does. He's surprised into silence, briefly confused, before she reaches in and pulls him into the most powerful embrace she can muster. He tenses in shock, stunned as ever by her eternal forwardness in emotional manners, before tentatively returning her hug, comforted by her warmth and by the possibility of her acceptance.

"I forgive you." She murmured softly, resting her head against his, holding him close to her, the boy sinking further into her embrace, and she can feel the slight shudders of his frame as he begins to give soft little sobs. "I forgive you, Hiro."

"I-I'm s-so sorry…"

"I know."

He shudders in her grip and whimpers: "B-Baymax is… Baymax is gone…"

He clutches at her more tightly now, finally and completely sinking into his grief as she continues to try and soothe him, her own tears sliding down her cheeks in response to his pain, at her own pain in losing the beloved nurse-bot, murmuring: "I-It's okay, Hiro. It's o-okay to cry. I'm here for you. W-we're here for you. Oh, Hiro…"

For a moment, upon that island, she had been scared of him, scared of what he had been willing to do to avenge his brother. In that moment, he had been more terrifying than even Callaghan, even the microbot swarm. And yet here he is now, small and vulnerable, having lost so much, all his anger and hatred having fallen into the void with only his agony left behind. His pain is so open to her, like a flame blazing in front of her, that it seems to directly seep into her, spurring her own shudders of tearfulness.

After everything that has happened, after their battle against Callaghan, it ends with them crying into each other upon a rooftop, their victory achieved yet their sacrifices unthinkable. For all their heroics, their actions as superheroes, they're still ultimately children, children growing into a world that was as quick to steal from them as it was to bless them.

All she wants now is to hold him close and hold him together, to let him know that someone will be there for him. She's crying her heart out for this bright and kind boy who had danced around dark paths and had spurred them into glory, this grieving boy who had lost his best friend to a world beyond anything they knew. If she has to hug him forever to ease his fears, his pains his worries, she'll do it.

They have already lost Tadashi, and they have just lost Baymax. They can't lose Hiro too.

Honey is briefly distracted from their conjoined crying by someone else crouching by them, surprised to see (somewhat blurrily given the lack of her visor) that it is Gogo. Her expression is uncharacteristically sombre, before she leans in and wraps her arms around both of them, resting her head on Honey's shoulder. And immediately after, the chemist finds Wasabi on the other side of her, adding his own embrace to the mix, and Fred finishes the puzzle, pushing his eyepiece back and joining them in their haphazard but heartfelt huddle.

All five of them, embraced, Hiro at their centre and surrounded by their love and support, they who had saved the day, they who had lost another beloved friend.

Still just children growing into a world, but they'll do their best to grow into it together.

"I w-won't shut you out…" Honey hears Hiro whimper, under the multitude of arms wrapped around him, and his hair tickles her chin as he lifts his head up slightly for his voice to be better heard. "Not a-again. Not any of you… I won't shut any of you out again."

"We're here for you, Hiro." Gogo assures him softly.

"Always will be, big man." Fred adds.

"We've got you." Wasabi murmurs.

"And we'll never let you go." Honey whispers.

True fear, she supposed, had been watching a hurt and angry boy turn his brother's dream into a monster. But that fear had no place now. Now, there was only them, the band of friends, the band of heroes and their fallen comrade who had fulfilled his creator's dream to the end, and all the love they could give to each other.

No fear anymore. No fear anymore.


End file.
